Big Four's TLC problem: Road to the Emmys 2012: The Nominees

August 13, 2012|Jon Weisman | Variety

The days in the Emmy drama spotlight might not be gone forever for the broadcast networks, but they're going to need to do one of two things to change their fortunes -- step up their game, or adjust to cable's. For the first time in Emmy history, no drama series nominee came from the big four broadcast networks -- ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC. And in fact, even with PBS staking the claim for over-the-air providers with "Downton Abbey," none of the nominees in the category produced a season longer than the 13 episodes apiece for AMC's "Breaking Bad" and "Mad Men." The development reignited fears that broadcast dramas are at a growing disadvantage each year come Emmy time, thanks in part to their need to cultivate a sizable audience but perhaps even more so to longer episode orders that make creative excellence harder to come by. While saying he "absolutely" thinks it's possible for broadcast dramas to return to Emmy glory, exec producer Damon Lindelof of "Lost" -- ABC's last Emmy-nominated drama -- calls the challenge much more intense than it is for cablers. "In order to make a show that a lot of people are going to watch, just to not get canceled, you tend to veer out of that high-art, qualitiative, critic-friendly storytelling that cable shows are much more able to embrace," Lindelof says. "And then, at its most basic element, the conveyor belt is moving so much faster," he adds. "You have to make twice as much product in the same amount of time. That's enormously challenging to maintain the same quality as they do on cable." It has even been suggested that broadcast and cable shows should compete in separate categories -- recalling the bygone days of the Cable Ace Awards, only with the broadcast race serving as the junior varsity competition. That's probably a step too far -- and certainly, the acknowledgment by Academy of Television Arts & Sciences CEO Bruce Rosenblum in late July that the org's Board of Governors should explore expanding the drama series field to 10 nominees would offer broadcast shows a simpler Emmy lifeline. In any case, the uphill climb for broadcast dramas at the Emmys has never seemed so steep.

The short and long of it

"Homeland" exec producer Alex Gansa, who spent his career in broadcast TV ("The X-Files," "24") before joining Howard Gordon to co-create Showtime's quintuple-nommed adaptation of an Israeli series, concurs that cable is more suited for quality drama. "You're only doing 12 or 13 episodes, and it just gives you that much more time to give a little tender loving care with each installment of your story," Gansa says. "The episodes can expand or contract based on the needs of the actual story. ... And you're not concerned with act breaks to go into commerical. You're not locked into a 42-minute time frame." Gansa says on "Homeland," the shooting schedule itself didn't differ significantly from what he experienced in broadcast. The key impact comes before lensing begins, with more time to prepare. "You could compare it almost directly to '24,'" he says. "With a discrete number of episodes like 12, you have the opportunity to really chart out the course of a season at the beginning that you don't have in network TV. Doing 24 episodes on '24,' there was no way you were going to be able to see that far ahead and understand where show was going to go. "On any broadcast network show, there's sort of a quagmire when you're trying to bridge the gap toward the finale." In addition, because of their smaller slates, cable's top executives are able to devote more attention to each individual series. Though some in the biz might say that's the last thing they want, Gansa values the attention. "The amount of time that Showtime (execs) David Nevins, Gary Levine and Randy Runkle get to take with each script and each cut of every episode, and the care they take with giving us notes, would be inconceivable" with a larger schedule, Gansa says. Another fringe benefit, Lindelof points out, is that cable networks with smaller slates have fewer shows they need to campaign for. "Speaking selfishly (regarding) 'Lost,' we were constantly making sure no ABC show was getting more campaign space than we were," Lindelof recalls. "And (the other shows) were probably doing the same."